2011 book 317

Mal Peet's Life: An Exploded Diagram
I found out about this book through the Forever YA blog, and saw it on at least one YA best-of-2011 list . . . but I would argue vociferously that this is NOT a YA book (unless YA is super literary in England). I wonder if it's marketed that way because the main character is a teenager through most of it--a feature of pretty much all coming-of-age novels, which this is, DUH. Anyway, the novel traces young Clem from his birth at the tail end of WWII through this childhood with his eccentric family, his school years, and then his pivotal teenage meeting with Frankie, daughter of the local rich guy (if Masterpiece has taught me anything, it's that all small British towns have one rich guy), and how everything comes to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Solid writing and story--I had some mixed feelings about the very end but otherwise liked this a lot. A-.